Apparently, White-Males-in-America-Are-Persecuted Is a Thing?

I’ve been reading more and more about this strange phenomenon lately, where there is a growing (yet still TINY — and I do mean “tiny,” too) minority of men out there who claim they are persecuted for being white men, and that white men are at disadvantages and get anti-special treatment. Which I find strange (disclosure: I am a white man) considering that something like 81% of Congress is made of white men and they are by far the majority in all governorships and statehouses across the country.

Be that as it may, I can sort of understand – though completely disagree with – white men claiming that. I had a friend who was a white man and he was denied a teaching job. He had all the same credentials as the other candidate, but she was from India and a female. Be that anecdote as it may (and I only have his story), again, I can sort of understand where some men may come from when making this claim.

What I can’t understand is when women make the claim. Especially when women make that claim and want to give more power to men to make sure that the men are supported against their apparent persecution.

Phyllis Schlafly is one of those women. Since I haven’t written much on her before, I’ll give you a tiny bit of background. She is quite old, and she was quite active in the mid-1900s opposing any legislative attempt to ensure women equal access to anything; among her conservative bona fides is proudly stated that she is “known for spearheading the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment.” She also believes that when a woman gets married, that woman has consented to sex at any time by her husband, therefore married women cannot possibly be raped (source). Her, um, “advice” is therefore great for conservatives and is often featured on World Net Daily.

In the first article, it takes awhile to really get to the whole father thing. The main thrust seems to be Michelle Bachmann looking fondly at one of Schlafly’s books:

“The American family was destroyed by a combination of political activists, judges, economic theorists, self-proclaimed experts, and left-wing politicians – with different motives that produced the same result,” Schlafly writes in the first chapter.

That’s the short answer, and she goes into greater detail in the rest of the book. To those familiar with Schlafly’s work, it will come as no surprise that she lays much of the blame for the death of the American family on radical feminists.

“That attitude is not compatible with marriage and motherhood, and it does not produce happiness,” Schlafly writes.

She also hates no-fault divorce, family courts for siding with mothers, the tax code, psychiatrists, judges, social workers, and pretty much anyone else (she really seems like that grumpy old neighbor who just about hates everything).

It’s towards the end that the title of the post seems to come out:

“It used to be that when a mom had a ten-year-old boy who was ‘a bundle of uncontained energy,’ the dad would teach him to play football or work on the farm to burn up that energy and make a man out of him. But now our society has convinced this mom to kick out her husband, drug the boy, and let him get fat and lazy,” she writes.

Liberals often claim there is a Republican “war on women” in America, but Schlafly disagrees. Instead, she writes in her book of a war on men – young boys, college men and especially fathers. She believes the feminist agenda is all about subordinating men.

Yup, a war against men. Somehow.

What about the second article? Well, it’s all about snagging a husband. Yes, seriously. Here’re paragraphs 2-6:

Long ago when I went to college, campuses were about 70 percent male, and until 1970 it was still nearly 60 percent. Today, however, the male percentage has fallen to the low 40s on most campuses.

The American Council on Education reports that women have averaged 57 percent of enrollments since the year 2000. Women received nearly 60 percent of all college degrees conferred in 2010.

This has dramatically changed social relationships and interactions among students. Most girls and even some boys do not like this change, but nobody knows what to do about it, and few are even willing to discuss it.

One female student described the new relationship between the sexes like this: “Out of that 40 percent male population, there are maybe 20 percent we would consider dating, and out of those 20 percent, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent.”

Anybody who understands human nature realizes that this situation changes behavior. Girls do not want to get left out in the cold, so they compete for men on men’s terms.

How does she propose to solve this horrible horrible problem? Quotas, removing any financial aid (not sure how that solves a male:female ratio problem), and bringing back mens’ sports teams by getting rid of one of her failures, her lack of stopping Title IX from becoming law in 1972, which prohibited any gender consideration in sports participation … because, apparently, all men want to do is play sports rather than learn in college, though I’m not sure how they’d have time for sports if they’re working full-time to support themselves.

So, what’s the solution? One solution might be to impose the duty on admissions officers to arbitrarily admit only half women and half men. Another solution might be to stop granting college loans, thereby forcing students to take jobs to pay for their tuition and eliminate time for parties, perhaps even wiping out time for fraternities and sororities. I went through college while working a full-time manual-labor job, and I don’t regret a minute of it; it was a great learning experience.

Another solution would be to reinstate all the men’s sports that were canceled by an extremist feminist application of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination against female students. The feminists have misused that law to abolish many men’s sports in order to achieve a statistical equality between the percentage of men playing on college sports teams and the percentage of male enrollment in college.

The feminists have abolished more than 2,200 men’s college sports teams since 1981, such as wrestling, gymnastics, track, golf and even some football in order to limit the number of male players to Title IX guidelines. That removes a primary motivation for young men to go to college, many of whom want to try out for a sport even if they are not good enough to make the team.

In the former post, Schlafly is lauded by commenters. In the second, a “troll” (for WND: a sane person!) got in early and got a lot of up-votes: “With the possible exception of “the,” every word in this hate-filled screed is an exaggeration, a misstatement, or an outright fabrication.” The second-highest-rated comment is similar, starting out with: “There are very few who can compete with the raw, longstanding hypocrisy of Phyllis Schlafly. Nearly every word from her mouth or keyboard is against feminism (the right of women to control their own destiny on an equal playing field), and yet she’s worked outside the home her entire adult life, after matriculating successfully through graduate programs, just like her mother, Odile Dodge.”